Screenshots emerged this week on what could potentially be the next version of Microsoft Office. The image above is an example of the new UI.
From what I’m seeing here I sincerely hope that this UI is either false or an early version of what will finally launch when Office 2010 ships. I think it leaves much to be desired. The nav elements in the “ribbon” at the top of the window are all over the place. Everything is crammed together and there is a severe need for whitespace to provide more context to each of those “Message” options and aid the eye in drawing distinctions between those options. You’ve also got text labels in multiple locations. Some are next to the nav icon, some below, and some just floating out by themselves.
The email header is okay, although I wonder why the “sent’ field is thrown over by itself on the right. The audio player, that I’m assuming features the voicemail that was sent to Ankur Kothari, is again in a weird spot. It also bumps down the entire message pane and creates some awkward negative space to the right side of the message window.
I’m not going to get into the spacing of the content in the message because it’s hard to tell if that’s being set by the application or by the user, but there’s plenty to mention in there too.
Again this is an early build and a lot of these issues could get resolved by the launch of the product. Hopefully that will be the case. Until then I’ll refer you to a wonderful quote by Steven Frank (posted on Daring Fireball) concerning these same UI problems:
This is impenetrable. It’s UI salad. I realize this is not (yet) shipping software, but my god. If you sat me down in front of this, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to begin.
“It’s UI salad.” Classic.
